Niihau : The Forbidden Island Opens...a Little

For more than a century, Niihau has been known as the Forbidden Island, owned by a single family of Scottish ancestry whose avowed purpose in declaring it off limits has been to preserve the pure Hawaiian bloodline and language--and to preserve the island itself as the family’s isolated cattle ranch.

Seventeen miles across the channel from Kauai and barely 19 miles long, Niihau is an enigma on Hawaii’s horizon. While other islands have turned to tourism, life on Niihau remains, by contrast, primitive. To this day, homes are without indoor plumbing and electricity, so that with the absence of utilities, the island’s handful of TVs are juiced by generators.

There are no cars, no bars and no public transportation. On Niihau, one either walks or rides a bicycle. A Jeep trail used by the ranch trucks is considered a major highway. Niihau is the last island to be inhabited almost totally by Hawaiians. Indeed, Niihauans claim their island is the soul of Hawaii, a speck of land isolated from a world beyond its shores that frequently appears terrifying to those who have lived their entire lives here.

Arid and forbidding, the island is in striking contrast to verdant Kauai--that lovely isle only a glimpse away. With its scrubby mountain range, thirsty plains and deserted beaches, Niihau is a lonely outpost lacking even the grottoes, lagoons and taro fields that thrive on other islands.

Some might picture Niihau as a fantasy island, the perfect place to escape from a world that seems at moments to have gone totally mad. But this imagined utopia is only a dream, a semi-desert island, ominous, mysterious . . . with few palms and nearly half of its 200-mile coastline subject to tidal waves.

Secrecy surrounding Niihau continues, even though the island’s private owners, the Robinson family, now flies vacationers on day trips here--this in an effort to subsidize a helicopter bought to evacuate the island’s sickand injured. The tours have been sporadic, averaging only a couple of flights a week. One reason is the Robinson family’s reluctance to advertise. “We don’t need any of those Madison Avenue shenanigans,” says Keith Robinson, one of the brothers whose ancestors bought the island from Hawaiian king Kamehameha in 1864. Only when four or more passengers sign up (the helicopter carries seven) does the chopper head for Niihau. At $200 per passenger for the three-hour adventure . . . well, it hasn’t been what one could describe as a runaway success.

Only recently, vacationers were offered another option: Under an agreement with the new Hyatt Regency on Kauai, picnic flights aboard the Robinson helicopter to Niihau are being offered at $250 per guest--the extra 50 coconuts covering the cost of the lunch. It’s a half-day tour with an opportunity to snorkel and swim in some of the clearest waters in Hawaii.

Whether one chooses the three-hour tour or the half-day trip with Hyatt, a peek at Niihau is a rare adventure. How many tourists can boast to the gang back home that they stepped foot on Hawaii’s Forbidden Island?

Except for those who do the helicopter tours, strangers are turned away by the Niihauans. When a Japanese fighter pilot crash landed on the island after bombing Pearl Harbor, he was swiftly disarmed by a huge Hawaiian who eliminated the luckless fellow on the spot. The occasional boater who tries to slip ashore is turned away by islanders who jealously guard their privacy. Neither the Niihauans nor the Robinsons who live on Kauai intend for Niihau to be invaded by tourists.

Taking off from Port Allen Airport on Kauai’s South Shore, helicopter pilot Tom Mishler sets a course straight for the Forbidden Island, promising passengers only a sneak look at Niihau’s only village, Puuwai. “We’re outsiders looking in,” Mishler explains. “We don’t want to make these people feel they’re living in a fish bowl.”

Overflying the coast, Mishler points out flotsam and beaches without a single sunbather. He circles the spot where Captain Cook’s crew put ashore in 1778, and later banks beside 1,281-foot Mt. Paniau, the island’s highest point. Mishler provides a running commentary, telling how in the 1700s the island supported a population in the thousands that was reduced over the years by migration to Kauai during extreme droughts and disease.

What little rain falls on Niihau--less than 10 inches a year--is caught in cisterns. In contrast, up to 500 inches a year drenches Kauai, whose mountains act as a shield against rain clouds that otherwise would drift across the channel to Niihau.

During our flight, Mishler buzzed wild pigs and the sun’s rays glinted off plantation-style shanties in Puuwai, with its single school (kindergarten to 12th grade) and church. While the island remains isolated, there are those who insist the culture is nevertheless starting to erode, as it has on Hawaii’s other islands. Still, it is said harmony reigns in the village, the family unit has been preserved and the Hawaiian language continues to be used in daily conversation.

Years ago, missionaries to Hawaii introduced Christianity, which was reinforced on Niihau by the deeply religious Robinson family. Sunday for the 200-plus islanders is a day of worship, a day when they are forbidden to play games or even to go fishing. The Sabbath is for the Lord. On Niihau, each day begins and ends with family prayers:

He ola no wau i ka makua lani,

meka like kahi kolu kiekie loa .

(My life comes from God above, the father the Son and the Holy Ghost.)

On weekdays, Niihau’s men work the Robinson ranch while wives and daughters share chores at home, stringing miniature shells that sell in the gift shops on other islands--often for considerable sums.

While Niihauns live rent-free--courtesy of the Robinsons--welfare and food stamps have been introduced, along with soda pop and junk food. A company store stocks rice, flour, sugar and other staples; other foods are delivered aboard a surplus military landing craft that’s skippered by Bruce Robinson, who works the family’s sugar plantation on Kauai and oversees the operation of the cattle ranch on Niihau. Robinson, who speaks fluent Hawaiian, is venerated by the islanders. On trips to Niihau, he sleeps aboard the landing craft or else on the beach. A Niihauan living on Kauai told me, “He is one of us.”

Back on Kauai, Robinson lives unpretentiously with his wife and children, driving a pickup truck and a Jeep--when he could well afford to be behind the wheel of a Ferrari. Robinson’s dedication to Niihau is evident by his concern for the island. Years of grazing by cattle, goats, wild pigs and horses has caused serious environmental damage. The problem lies primarily with the wild pigs that tear away at the growth and shrieking winds that rip away the topsoil, so that little land remains for farming. Although on his frequent safaris Bruce Robinson hunts down the pigs, they continue to reproduce at an alarming rate.

In 1980, when the state offered to buy the island for a park, the Niihauans responded with this simple message: “We prefer our present mode of life. Please leave us alone.”

Ho mai aloha a pili me au i koolua, noho kahi mehameha.

(Give of your love, let it embrace me, let us live together alone.)

On our helicopter tour with Mishler, the pilot finally settled the craft on a lonely beach at the north end of Niihau, which faces the tiny island of Lehua. This far from the village, our chances of stumbling upon a local islander was remote, and the only Niihauans I met were back on Kauai.

While Mishler stirred up an eel hiding in a rocky cove, we listened to the mournful voice of the wind, a haunting reminder of Niihau’s isolation. Seabirds cried out and monk seals sunned themselves on rocks. Surf curling over the lava created a melody that’s been played for centuries.

On Niihau, islanders are free to leave. Some do, never to return. Others hurry back. On Kauai, a young girl named Kananiokuuhone is shamelessly homesick for Niihau. A few years ago, she left with her ailing mother, but she dreams constantly of returning to the simple life on an island.

Isaac Kanahele, a musician at Kauai’s Waiohai Hotel, left Niihau nearly 20 years ago. As he grows older, he misses the island. His eyes reflect a moment of passage. “Growing up on Niihau, there was nothing to worry about. We had food and shelter. There were no drugs or crime,” he says. Also, the thought of growing old is less fearsome, for Niihauans care for the elderly and infirm.

Niihau was purchased 127 year ago by an ancestor of the Robinson family, Eliza McHutchenson Sinclair, who paid Kamehameha V $10,000 for the island. Earlier, as the story goes, the Hawaiian king had offered Sinclair all of Waikiki--the Honolulu beach and acreage inland for miles--for the same sum. But Sinclair rejected the offer, believing the land to be too swampy for the cattle ranch she intended to establish.

And so the thought comes to mind: Had Sinclair taken the king up on his offer, Waikiki’s main drag might be crowded with cows today rather than cars--and with barns in place of skyscrapers.

Imagine.

GUIDEBOOK

Forbidden

Island

For helicopter tours of Niihau, contact Niihau Helicopter Tours, P.O. Box 370, Makaweli, Kauai, Hawaii 96769, (808) 335-3500. Cost is $200 per person for a three-hour tour. Half-day picnic tours, with box lunches and snorkeling gear provided, are available exclusively to guests of the Hyatt Regency Hotel at Poipu. Cost is $250. Tours are offered Monday through Friday, but are only scheduled if enough guests sign up.